RescueTime Blog

Gearing up for a Productive New Year – What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

It’s that time of the year when many fellow RescueTimers and other professed Lifehackers begin to look back at their work and accomplishments to measure what was completed in 2011 and what is on deck for 2012. Since joining RescueTime as the VP of Product Marketing earlier this year in May 2011 I’ve logged 1120 hours in RescueTime in total. Now that I know what I’m doing with my time and my personal patterns of productivity, I want to set out what I’m going to accomplish in 2012. Before answering this question let’s take a look back at 2011.

According to RescueTime in 2011 I spent the majority of my time:

1. Buried in email – 200+ hours.
2. 50+ hours doing RescueTime Support (answering emails, feature requests, bugs and voicemails).
3. 100+ hours of food (includes lunch, coffee and sometimes dinner).
4. 50+ hours chatting with my co-workers and colleagues.
5. 50+ hours of meetings.
6. 30+ hours of using my Social Media toolset, Hootsuite.com.

1100 hours is impressive, but when you realize that I had the potential to log close to 1600 hours I would have had a much clearer picture of my time. I plan to spend the next year logging more of my time – even the mundane stuff. For example when I’m not working productively I need to mark the time as Family or another similar category that demonstrates I have spent time away from work and everything needs to be tracked.  Additionally, I plan to set some goals for hitting specific task related objectives, like 1 hour in business intelligence. Let’s look at a graph for some more ideas.

What are my New Year’s Resolutions given the data above?

Knowing that my job is very communication intensive what are the things I can do to improve my productivity for the upcoming 2012 year?

1. Utilize Inbox Zero and Get Things Done to respond to the most important emails first – reduce inbox time sink.
2. Develop a social media strategy that leverages the fewest amount of tools and time to accomplish the required tasks.
3. Keep working with RescueTime development team to put the data closer to our users! Not just PC, Mac and Android, but iPhone, iPad and Linux clients as well. Once we have a complete offering almost all of my time will  be completely tracked.
4. Help close more sales of RescueTime Team Edition accounts utilizing Skype to have the necessary global reach. Currently Skype only consumes 5 hours of my time for the year – I expect this number to grow next year and potentially utilize Google’s new Hangout features.
5. Create a smooth onboarding process for Team Accounts. We need videos, tutorials, customer reviews. Many of these docs will be hosted in our Google Docs for RescueTime.
6. Analyze moving our support system to Assistly from Tender. Right now, we require a login to get support which prevents those with login problems from working to resolve their issues. Assistly could give us new functionality that will allow us to more easily connect with our customers.

Lately, there’s been a lot of stuff in the news about Carrier IQ and how it’s software has been collecting all kinds of data from your mobile phone. A lot of people are freaked out about it, and rightfully so. It’s apparently done without consent, and it’s not really clear what the data is used for. It’s kind of sad, really, to see such a negative high-profile story about your phone’s ability to collect data about you.

As a fun counterpoint, here are some ways that awesome little data collector we all carry around with us can be used the right way, to make your life easier or help you learn awesome stuff about yourself.

Easy to use apps:

Glympse: Never have another drawn-out sms conversation with someone you’re traveling to meet with. Just send them a Glympse, and let your phone keep them updated on your progress.

Google Latitude: Automatically track and share your location. It gets pitched as more of a social application, but what I find the most interesting is the history dashboard. Another awesome trick is the ability to automatically check-in at places you frequent. For example, I keep a log of the number of times I go to the coffee shop down the street from my apartment. I keep a similar log of how often I go to the gym. The coffee shop wins.

Placeme: A new app that takes Latitude’s auto-checkins and expands on them. It tries to automatically capture, categorize, and quantify everywhere you spend your time. It’s pretty cool, but seemed like it was KILLING my phone’s battery so I stopped using it after a few days.

RescueTime: (shameless plug here, sorry) People are spending more and more time on their mobile devices. RescueTime for Android gives an understanding of which apps you are using the most. (I use the Reddit app on my phone about twice as much as I do on my computer, for instance)

Harder to use apps (but still awesome):

Here’s a couple that can be really powerful, but require some extra legwork to get something useful from the data.

MyTracks: Much more robust location tracking than Google Latitude. Every few seconds, it records your latitude, longitude, elevation and velocity. There are some visualizations you can see within the app itself, but you can also export the data. That’s the part I find interesting. I used it to do a month-long study of my transportation habits.

Cellbots Sensor Data Logger: One of the most robust data collection applications of them all. Gather measurements from all available sensors on your phone, as well as recording video or taking time lapse images. I haven’t used it for anything, but it’s good enough for NASA, so that’s gotta count for something:

What did I miss? What’s your favorite data collector app?

Holiday Special: Refer a friend and get 6 months free.

For a limited time, you can give your friends a 50% discount on their first year of RescueTime. When they sign up, we’ll give you six free months of RescueTime Solo Pro too. Everyone wins!

How it works: Share your invite link with your friends, colleagues, etc. When they visit with that link, they will be able to sign up for a year of RescueTime Solo Pro for 50% off the normal price. When they sign up, we will add six months of Solo Pro credit to your account as well.

Find out your Referral link right http://www.rescuetime.com/accounts/referrals (Screenshot below)

Some fine print about the Give six months, Get six months promotion…

• There is no limit on how many accounts you can refer. (in other words, you can earn yourself a lot of free time)
• Offer is valid from December 19, 2011 to January 6, 2012. Any referrals outside of those dates will not be eligible for the discounted signup rate.
• If you refer someone and they sign up for a Solo Lite (free) plan, they obviously won’t get a discount, but we will give you two weeks of credit on your account.
• There is no free trial when someone takes advantage of the 50% discount.
• Team accounts are not eligible for this promotion.

You can now connect with us on Google+. Just in case this blog, our Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc. weren’t enough.

One of the most common first-responses I hear when I explain the value of RescueTime to people is:

“That sounds terrifying, I don’t even want to think about how much time I waste!”

I hear it from all types of people. Many of them I’ve worked with in the past and can totally vouch for them not being big slackers. So why all the anxiety? It reminds me of  an often mis-interpreted observation made by computer scientist Calvin Mooers in 1959 that states:

“An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it.”

Mooers’ Law (not to be confused with Moore’s law), tends to get taken out of context quite a bit and used as a general usability axiom. “Software should be as easy to use as possible”. Not a bad point, but that’s not at all what he actually meant by it. His point was that sometimes acquiring new information means that you will have to do something with it. Or the more scary version, you’ll learn something about yourself and won’t know what to do about it. Many times the most comfortable thing is to not have the information in the first place.

It’s a pretty human reaction. I know I’ve fallen into that pattern a LOT throughout my life. It’s the same thing that makes us dread yearly performance reviews at work, or makes us nervous about going to the dentist for a check-up. In most cases, if something is wrong in those situations, things you did (or didn’t do) had something to do with it. And that can be a pretty unpleasant thing to think about. Especially if the consequences are severe.

That said, I think in the vast majority of cases, having information ends up leading to a better outcome than not having it, so that’s a pretty big motivator for me. But I also think that the systems giving you the information should be able to take some of the potential sting out of they knowledge you’re gaining with them by making it easier to respond to new information. That’s one area I think is really exciting for behavioral self-tracking applications and devices. They should not only increase your self-awareness, they should also give you tools to change when you end up getting results that you aren’t happy with.

Hello RescueTimers!

For a limited time, we’re squashing the deal for a 1-year subscription to RescueTime Pro (normally $72/year) for ONLY $21! ($1.75/month!)

• Understand how much time you spend on the computer each day
• Rank your productivity with specific sites and applications
• Use the Android App to visualize your time spent on the phone with people
• There’s a “Get Focused” feature to block distracting websites for a specified period of time so you can get work done (::cough Facebook cough::)
• And see more detailed data about which documents and web pages you are spending the most time on

-> Purchase Today

Note:

* Existing users wishing to add to their subscription will likely have to provide a coupon code to our Support Team to have this package added to your existing accounts once you’ve purchased through the AppSumo link.

** Free Trial users wishing to try the offer should cancel their trial and resign up through the AppSumo link.

A couple weeks ago Robby and I attended this meeting of self trackers known simply as Seattle Quantified Self. With over 30 people attending the third meetup, there were plenty of show + tell sessions covering weight, happiness, transportation and productivity. Each of these talks were very informative and described how people committed to documenting their every day lives while making small changes for the future. My favorite was Amelia’s Hacker’s Diet implementation of weighing herself everyday.

Amelia Greenhall: Weigh Everyday = Understanding

Amelia Greenhall (Seattle): Weigh Everyday = Understanding from David Reeves on Vimeo.

Buster Benson: How I use RescueTime

Buster Benson: How I use RescueTime from David Reeves on Vimeo.

Adam Loving: FeatBeat

Adam Loving (Seattle): Featbeat from David Reeves on Vimeo.

Robby McDonell: Transportation Logging

Robby MacDonell: One Month of Transportation Logging from David Reeves on Vimeo.

Erik Kennedy: Tracking Happiness

Erik Kennedy: Quantifying Happiness from David Reeves on Vimeo.
We are excited and looking forward to the next meeting so stay tuned.

Hi there! I’m Robby Macdonell and I’m thrilled to be joining the RescueTime team to help out with product development and the overall user experience. They’re a great bunch of guys, and I have an awesome view of Elliot Bay out our office window, but there are a few other reasons why I’m giddy with excitement about this:

1. I just happen to be the very first RescueTime user ever

That’s right, back in late 2007 when RescueTime was just an idea, I helped out for a couple weeks on the front-end. I ended up being in the right place at the right time, and BOOM, I got first-user bragging rights! I’ve taken a couple of breaks from it over the years, but all in all, I’ve logged 5,643 hours and 9 minutes of computer time over the past 4 years.

2. I LOVE geeking out about data. 

How so? I’m glad you asked. One time I wanted to make a mix CD that would be good on a rainy fall day. I cross-referenced the three years of my last.fm listening data against historical precipitation and temperature records. The mix was actually pretty damn good. Or, there was the time I got the feeling I would benefit from switching to a bike for my daily commute, so I spent a month tracking down-to-the-second location data to get a better understanding of my transportation habits. Turns out the bike is a good idea, any way you look at the data.

3. Right now is a really exciting time for personal data. 

When RescueTime started a few years ago, the idea of stockpiling these massive piles of data about yourself seemed kinda weird. It wasn’t really clear how it could actually be beneficial to people. I feel like that’s starting to change. Particularly in the health space, a lot of really exciting stuff is coming out that clearly shows that giving people more data about themselves can help them make positive changes. Nike+, Fitbit, and Zeo are great examples of this. Given the fact that people are spending an ever-increasing amount of time focused on their computers and smart phones, RescueTime all of a sudden finds itself in a really interesting position.

I think there’s something really profound that can happen here. Right now, so many websites will track as much data as they possibly can about their users’ computer habits. This is done mainly to serve you ads that you are more likely to click on. I find that fact pretty depressing. What if there was a way to flip that around? To make your data something that you control and benefit from? To help you make the right decisions for yourself.

I think that would be amazing. I want to make it happen. And I can’t wait to share it with you.

If you’d like to follow me personally, you can follow me on twitter at @robby1066. Be forewarned, though, you’ll likely get a lot of posts about hockey and cupcakes.

It’s becoming increasingly common and even necessary to measure the productivity of your knowledge workers, either locally staffed or remote. You can ask your employees to complete timesheets and lengthy status emails, but do you really know how your company’s human asset is being spent? You want to optimize your team’s time for their sake and yours– but when people try to enter their own time, they are at best mostly inaccurate, even with good intentions. RescueTime Team Edition gives you and your employees a very high level of detailed information with minimal or no data entry.

1. Sign up for RescueTime Team Edition. 14 day Free Trial with no setup fees. This will get you started quickly. http://www.rescuetime.com/signup/team/empower

2. Add Some Users From Your Team. If you didn’t during the setup process, add users to your account through Settings -> Add Users. It sends them an email to walk them through their personalized setup. As your users get setup, you can continue fine tuning the administrative settings such as custom categories, adjustments to what gets monitored, monitoring schedules and group management. I recommend that new organizations try to have their users in Open Mode with a 24×7 Monitoring Schedule. Remember, categorizations and re-scoring applies to each group separately– so your Sales team doesn’t have the same settings as your Development group. Open mode gives the users in your organization the ability to turn on, off and pause the RescueTime data collector. When a user is done working simply choose “Pause until tomorrow”, and we ignore activities until his/her next day of work. Giving users control over their RescueTime experience as part of the information sharing experience.

3. Set goals and workplace policy about leisure surfing and other activities. Goals are on the right hand menu under Settings -> Goals. Positive goals are great– You can acknowledge those who reach impressive results like 4 or more hours of solid productive work in a day. Give your team some guidelines on what activities are Productive and some common sense about leisure surfing while at work. At RescueTime HQs we have goals set at 5 hours of Productivity each day and we encourage light leisure surfing to less than an 1 hour a day.

4. Spend time categorizing which sites are Productive versus those that are Unproductive; Go to Time Reports -> Activities. Facebook.com is the obvious example that gets a default of “Very unproductive”. Maybe you are social marketing firm who runs on Facebook, you can re-score it to be Productive. Your choice here is an “it’s like this most of the time” consideration. You should also decide whether Email is Productive or Neutral for your organization. For example, Developers often find Email neutral and time spent coding is productive.

5. Set up your Offline Time options. Go to Settings -> Monitoring. This will allow your team to classify work after they have stepped away. You get 6 options. Some suggestions would include: Meeting, Phone Call, Food, Personal, Other Work. Android smartphone or tablet users can run the mobile app, and have unlimited custom offline time input, including an easy “stopwatch” interface.

6. Quickly scan to see who’s active in a group and who might be stuck. Use the Attendance Time Report seen below.

7. Know what your Team is doing at all times. Review the All Activities graph for all team members. You can sort by employee and duration: day, week or year.

Now that you have everything setup and running for your team I would recommend that you collect at least 2 weeks of data before making any changes based on what RescueTime is reporting. We strongly believe in our users that if you give them the data to help make them more productive they will take those actions and change – we can guarantee your team will boost their productivity . Get started today - http://www.rescuetime.com/signup/team/empower.